News

Thursday, 17 October 2013

Great to see Bathgate-based mobile recycler, Redeem doing so well. They have just announced that they are moving into Brazil at the start of November. Although Redeem is often described as a recycler, the company is an international environmental marketing services
company that runs the handset trade-in or buy-back schemes for major MNO (mobile network operators) and
corporate clients throughout Europe, the Middle East and North America. Certainly, the Brazilian opportunity looks huge. The Latin America region is estimated to have seen a 77% increase in sales of smartphones this year.Redeem's entry into Brazil is in partnership with Intellibox, which allows Redeem to use the Intellibox system to automatically access a customer’s handset and provide an instant buy-back price and payment voucher. Redeem are already acknowledged as one of the UK's fastest growing companies according to the Sunday Times Fast Track 100. As PHPR has a long history of involvement in both technology and environmental performance, we are particularly proud to be publicising Redeem's moves into foreign markets.

Friday, 4 October 2013

Social Media Maturing

Good to see Justin Pearse's blog at The Drum covering Social Media Week. He's reporting that the industry is showing some signs of growing up and becoming part of an integrated digital marketing campaign.

The reported lack of understanding of social media at board level took me straight back to my early days in PR. The marketing directors of large companies, who was often locked in a bizarre fight with the PR team for budget, had a seat at the board table while the PR guy usually didn't - although he was often glued to the ear of the CEO, so wielded considerable influence. It didn't make for happy co-operation.

Now PR is much more integrated with digital marketing as we produce content and links from massive media sites to augment content or inbound marketing campaigns and gain wider influence.

Just as PR had its fights over measuring ROI, so social media has been embroiled in trying to prove its business worth.

Perhaps the most encouraging point for any business owner was the report from Social Media Week that nowadays:

"If you make a mistake in social media all you need to do is apologise and move on."

For a while the publishing standards that PR and journalism do their best to adhere to were applied to social media, but social interaction is often a quickfire conversation conducted by individuals: not a fully considered statement piece.

Apparently Asda takes it one step further and deletes Facebook posts that don't get 100 likes within a few minutes. Not so long ago big brands deleting posts would be unthinkable.

Many years ago, I was in the rather nice sauna suite at the Royal Commonwealth Games Pool in Edinburgh, looking forward to the deep relaxation induced by the heat on a cold winter's evening. Then in came a group of ladies from a major utility's call centre. They were de-briefing after hours of enduring sporadic verbal abuse and foul treatment as a result of rigid and unbending customer handling rules. Their tales from the customer coal-face left my shoulders higher up than my ears and I exited early feeling more stressed than I arrived.

Hopefully customer service has moved on or customer engagement will run real trouble on social media, even with it's new-found relaxation of standards!

Video as a PR strategy

I'm a great fan of video for B2B businesses and professionals like lawyers and accountants who have a 1-2-1 relationship with their clients. Video allows you to "bottle" individuals' personalities and send them out online to work 24/7/365 (with no extra wages - accountants usually like that bit), provided that they are saying something that is topical and helpful, and not using it to sell in any way. That's because this video purpose is to capture just enough of a person to allow other people to have that famous 'first impression'. People only take a few seconds to decide whether they like you or not - and in business that translates into whether they want to work with you. Given that quick decision, you'd think one video would do it, but it's a good idea to make a series of helpful videos on different relevant themes, so that your announcements about them get seen at different times by different people, plus different topics will extend the appeal. Videos have a lot more weight that text online, and are much more memorable, so they have much greater impact than static text and pictures - plus boost your search positions on keywords. Is it really true that people make these sorts of decisions about who to work with from one video? The signals we give off are so subtle that they can be picked up without anything being said. There was a fascinating study described in a self-help book published 20 years ago: "Families and how to survive them" by psychiatrist Dr Robin Skynner and John Cleese. They took students who had never met and asked them to go into a room and pair up with someone without saying anything. Once paired, they were to remain silent and repeat the task as a pair, to form a foursome. All the people grouped into fours and when they were allowed to speak they found they had a lot in common. The reason for that is that they had successfully all the people in the room with similar family circumstances to themselves. And had managed to find each other without words! I believe this means that we can absolve ourselves from any angst about negative selection decisions regarding work. There are forces that are unconscious at work, so it's not really personal at all.If we try to go against that flow, we will end up pushing water uphill. Of course, positive selection is obvious proof of the extraordinary wit, wisdom and intelligence of the person who saw that you and your offering as vastly superior...There is room for everyone to work productively with like-minded people with common backgrounds and video is a powerful technique for finding more of the sort of business that goes well. That means easier working relationships, better client retention and probably more referrals: these are all powerful and profitable pluses. The chances are, you'll have more fun too. Isn't it time you started to put video at the front end of your pipeline to attract more positive business? Contact us if you need a hand to get going as we can point you towards cost-effective 1-2-1 DIY training in this area.